1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communications systems and methods. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods for measuring an audience for a telecast in real time.
2. Description of the Related Art
Viewership monitoring provides critical information for broadcasters with regard to the tastes, preferences and demographics of its audience for various programs aired during a broadcast period. This information allows broadcasters to select programs to optimize viewership and revenue from subscriptions and/or advertising.
One technique for monitoring viewership is to poll the viewing habits of an audience manually. These techniques involve the use of questionnaires filled out by the viewer directly or via telephone solicitation. Unfortunately, the manual approach relies on viewer memory and requires user cooperation and feedback. Accordingly, this approach is costly, inaccurate, slow and burdensome to the viewer.
Certain systems are known in the art for automatically monitoring viewership. However, what is known about these generally proprietary systems suggests that the systems are designed to work with analog tuners. Analog tuners require a separate (physical) frequency for each channel. Digital tuners, such as those employed in direct broadcast satellite networks, are designed to receive multiple (virtual) channels on a single frequency. Hence, conventional automatic systems for monitoring viewership have not heretofore been able to function with satellite direct broadcast set top decoders.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for an inexpensive, accurate system and method for automatically monitoring the viewing habits of viewers of direct broadcast satellite television programming.